Crafting

Contents

Steps for Crafting

Determine Scope - Larger projects are going to take more time and so overall progress needs to be tested less often than shorter term projects. Use the guide below to determine the total length of time the project will take and the increment that should be tested. Some larger projects require crews of people to successfully complete. The chart below assumes that there is an adequate team to work on the whole project. If there is not, the GM should adjust the difficulty and time taken to reflect this.

Determine Overall Difficulty - The overall difficulty of the project determines the total number of successes that need to be attained for the project to be completed. The GM has the final say on overall difficulty but as a rule of thumb, to find the overall difficulty divide the total cost of the project by 3.

Determine Incremental Difficulty - The incremental difficulty determines how difficult it is to make overall progress on a project. Some projects, such as building construction for example, would have a low incremental difficulty, but have a fairly high overall difficulty to represent a largely unskilled force constructing something over time. Other projects, such as the crafting of an exotic weapon, would have a fairly high incremental difficulty, but a reasonably lower overall difficulty representing the work of one or two skilled smiths creating something complex. The GM has final say on the incremental difficulty, but the chart below gives a baseline for some common crafting projects.

Determine Materials Cost - As a general rule, an item will cost 2/3rds (round up) of it’s market price to craft. This cost assumes that the Player Character (PC) does not have a dedicated workshop, factory or staff to assist in the construction of their project. If the PC does possess adequate resources, the cost may be reduced down to 50% (round up) of it’s normal market price. The GM has the final say on what constitutes adequate resources. For example, having a small workshop and an apprentice or two will be sufficient for the forging of most mundane weapons and armor, but not enough to build a locomotive.

Craft the Project - To craft a project you must get a total number of successes equal to the Overall difficulty of the project. Additionally, to make any progress at all, you must roll a number of successes at least equal to the Incremental difficulty. As long as you roll at least equal to or above the Incremental difficulty all successes count toward your Overall successes. Should you fail to roll at least the Incremental difficulty two or more times in a row however, you have lost progress and subtract the number of successes you failed by from your Overall successes. If you wind up with negative overall successes, the project has failed completely and 1/2 the materials are wasted

Example: Dreneth the Blacksmith is crafting a common quality sword that requires 10 Overall successes and has an Increment difficulty of 3. On his first roll, he gets a total of 4 successes and so can count all 4 of those towards his total successes. On his next roll, he gets only 2 successes and so makes no progress. On his third roll, he rolls 2 again this time actually losing progress as it was his second failure in a row. Since he failed by 1, he’ll subtract 1 from his Overall successes for a total of 3 overall success. On his next roll, he rolls 5 successes and so adds all 5 to his Overall successes; he now has 8 Overall successes. On his fifth roll, he rolls 2 successes and makes no progress. Even though he only needs 2 more Overall successes, he makes no progress because he did not meet the Incremental Diff of 3. On his last roll, he rolls 3 and completes the item with a total of 11 successes. The item took a total of 6 increments to complete. Each increment for this project was one hour, so the sword took a total of 6 hours to complete.

Optional Rule - Quick Crafting

Crafting each individual item as listed above can take an overly long amount of actual play time when a character is attempting to craft multiple projects, craft projects for which he can easily beat the Incremental Diff or when they have theoretically unlimited time for crafting “in-game.” As such, at the GMs discretion, they may attempt to quick-craft a project using the following rules:

Use the Incremental Diff as a base and add 3 or half again (+50%, rounding up) the normal Incremental Diff, whichever is higher.

The character may make up to three attempts to beat this Diff and treats this Diff as both the Incremental Diff and the Overall Diff for the project.

If the character is able to beat the Diff on at least one of their three attempts, the item is successfully crafted and is assumed to take three time increments.

Repairing Broken Items

If an item breaks or falls into disrepair you may use craft skills to repair the item. Doing so takes 1/4 of the normal time for both increment and overall crafting time. The incremental Diff to repair an item is reduced by 3 or by 1/2 (rounding up), whichever is higher, minimum of 1. The Overall Diff to repair the item is reduced by 1/2 (rounding up). Repairing most items does not typically incur any cost so long as a character has tools available to them. For mechanical items and other items with moving parts, 1d5 Spare Parts may be required. Other items that are severely damaged may require up to 1/4 or 1/2 their market value in new parts. Use the list below to determine what, if any cost will be incurred in repairing an item. As always, the GM has final say on any costs associated with repairing an item.

*1 day is considered to be 8 hours. As a general rule, a character may not spend more than 8 hours a day crafting.

** Adding multipliers: If two or more modifiers that multiply a difficulty, time increment, or other variable are applied to the same project, instead of multiplying the multipliers, simply add one to the multiplier for each additional multiplier. For example: If you are making a Best quality weapon, which would increase the normal crafting increment by x2 twice, instead you would add 1 to the multiplier for a total adjusted crafting increment of x3.

*** This modifier is applied after all other modifiers have been applied.

Inventions

The rules presented here are geared towards crafting common weapons, armor, and other simple items. The act of creating complex machinery, contraptions, and complex mechanical items are covered in the the Inventions section. Inventions use the same rules for crafting regarding skill tests towards making progress, but have a very different process for determining Incremental Difficulty, Overall Difficulty, and other costs. See the Inventions section for full details.